As reported by Eurogamer on Thursday, July 17, the developer behind the Kickstarter-funded Yogventures , Winterkewl Games, has announced that project has been cancelled, and has offered early access to the game TUG to its backers as compensation.
” As you may have heard, Winterkewl Games have stopped work on Yogventures – but this is actually a good thing. The project was proving too ambitious and difficult for them to complete with their six-man team,” Yogscast co-founder Lewis Brindley wrote in an email to the game’s 13,647 backers.
“ While this was Winterkewl’s project, we put a lot of time, energy and effort into trying to help them realise their dream. Since we heard the news, we’ve been working hard behind the scenes to make sure that you still get awesome stuff and cool experiences.
” Although we’re under no obligation to do anything, instead we’re going to do our best to make this right, and make you really glad you backed the project! ”
The game that’s being offered as compensation, TUG , is described as being similar to Yogventures , which is an open-world survival game that’s already in development.
” In many ways TUG is the game we were hoping Winterkewl would create. It has huge potential for the future. We’ve been playing the Early Access version on Steam and you’ll soon be able to see us playing the game on Yogscast channels, ” Brindley continued.
According to Eurogamer, Winterkel Games were hemorrhaging money because of the project, so much so that the studio’s lead developer Kris Vale contributed $25,000 of his own personal income towards Yogventures development.
” Working on Yogventures was an amazing experience and everyone at Winterkewl Games really wanted to achieve the very lofty goals the game set out to do, but lack of experience in planning and managing a project of this scope proved too much for our little team, ” Vale explained on Reddit .
“ We always knew that we were going to need to partially fund development ourselves so the lost money is not in any way regrettable, however without pre-orders to help offset those costs, eventually, after I had invested innumerable hours and over $25,000.00 of my own money in the game, we had to admit that without more funding we couldn’t afford to keep the game going on our own.
I can’t speak for the Yogscast and I make no claims that I do, for their own reasons they decided the game wasn’t up to the quality they needed it to be to make videos supporting our pre-order business model. That was and is their prerogative and we had no way of influencing that decision other than making the game as best we could with what we had to work with, ” Vale added
In a statement that was later issued to Eurogamer, Yogscast have assured that the project’s backers should already have received their physical rewards respective of the amount of money they contributed, but advises that backers should contact them should any rewards be missing.
Also in the statement, Yogscast explained that it would be working with Nerd Kingdom, the developer of TUG , to create rewards similar to that of Yogventures .
Yogscast’s statement is detailed in full below, courtesy of Eurogamer.
“The failure of Yogventures is a matter of deep regret for the Yogscast, we put a lot of faith in the developer Winterkewl, including allowing them to use our likenesses and brand. However the project was too vast in scope to be realised and despite a huge amount of hard work from Winterkewl they have had to abandon it.
The game as it stands it is not capable of being released and certainly wouldn’t live up to the expectations of the people that backed the Kickstarter or pre-ordered the game.
However we don’t intend to leave it there as we know that the Yogventures backers and buyers are our most dedicated fans so we are intent on finding them some awesome stuff and cool experiences in its place.
Last week we announced that everyone concerned will get a copy of TUG. Nerd Kingdom’s game is still in alpha but is shaping up to be everything we wanted Yogventures to be. In addition, we have organised for Nerd Kingdom to have the source code, assets and designs of Yogventures to ensure we’re making best use of Winterkewl’s work.
For the Yogventures Kickstarter backers the physical rewards should already have been received and we’re happy for people to contact us at [email protected] if any are missing so we can look into it for them.
For those rewards that were specifically based on in-game items we’re working with Nerd Kingdom to try and match them as closely as possible and will communicate that directly to the people concerned and take any feedback on board.
We also hope to be able to announce other games and fun stuff for the backers and buyers of Yogventures over the summer. Watch this space.”
[ Eurogamer ]